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If you happen to possess the dual savinness of being up to speed on your hashtag game as well as the happens of the stock market, this news is for you.

Twitter Inc. made its debut on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), making it the most anticipated stock since Facebook made its entry into the market on February 1, 2012. And unlike Mark Zuckerberg’s intial woes, the 140-character site made its impact felt in a major way.

The opening price for public was set at $26 but by this morning, they opened up at $45.10 a share.

Reports the AP:

“Facebook was so overhyped people felt like they couldn’t miss out,” said Kenneth Polcari, a senior floor official at O’Neil Securities Inc. “Twitter isn’t like that, though you can feel the excitement.”

British actor Patrick Stewart rang the opening bell at the exchange together with 9-year-old Vivienne Harr, who started a charity to end childhood slavery using the microblogging site.

“I guess I represent the poster boy for Twitter,” Stewart said, adding that he had only been tweeting for about a year and wasn’t buying Twitter stock today.

Twitter’s building staff opened its offices in San Francisco extra early, at 5:30 a.m. on Thursday. By 7:30 a.m., hundreds of employees had flocked to their 9th floor cafeteria to watch Stewart ring the opening bell on TV.

The microblogging network priced its 70 million shares at above the targeted range of $23 to $25, which had been raised once before. The IPO values Twitter at $14.1 billion, with the potential to reach $14.4 billion if underwriters exercise an overallotment option.

If the full overallotment is exercised, as expected, Twitter could raise $2.1 billion, making it the second largest Internet offering in the United States behind Facebook Inc’s $16 billion IPO last year and ahead of Google Inc’s 2004 IPO, according to Thomson Reuters data.

It should be noted that Google also made a splash on the stock market this year.

The stock market may be a tricky device but social networks are here to stay. It should be interesting to see if casual users will begin to vest interest in the market.

Are any of you readers planning to take a stab at it?